How do you think it would go over at your office if, during your first meeting on the job, you grabbed three empty beer bottles and smashed them with a bat?If you're Jeff Charney, chief marketing officer at Progressive Corp., it would seem to go over quite well — and help you land at No. 35 on the Fast Companylist of the country's 100 most creative business people.“With his shaved head, affinity for temporary neck tattoos and a ban on PowerPoint, Jeff Charney believes in the power of the unexpected,” the magazine writes in a short profile of the auto insurance company executive.“People want to take a walk on the wild side," he says. "But how do you get them to go there? You have to let people be comfortable in their own skin first, especially in corporate America."When Mr. Charney joined Progressive from Aflac almost two years ago, “he grabbed empty beer bottles with labels that read COMPLACENCY, GOSSIP and ME, ME, ME and smashed them with a bat,” Fast Company notes.Mr. Charney also sent a Cleveland-area high school marching band through company headquarters, hired a gospel choir to break up a meeting and had Progressive spokescharacter “the Messenger” ride a Harley down the hallway. He also arranged a field trip that took employees to an unfinished building to throw paint-filled balloons at the walls.Has it worked? Fast Company thinks so.“Charney and his team have brought fresh ideas to the iconic Flo campaigns — one reason that Progressive wrote more policies than ever last year, more than $15 billion worth,” the magazine says.Wish list
College students looking to break into the job market are setting their sights pretty high.A new survey of 60,000 U.S. undergraduates, conducted by global employment branding firm Universum, finds that students identify Google and Apple at the top of their list of ideal employers.At least the kids are smart. Universum points out that Google, for one, has long been known for offering almost over-the-top benefits to their employees including free meals, free project time and above-market compensation.Rounding out the top 10: Disney, Ernst and Young, Deloitte, J.P. Morgan (the survey was pre-$2 billion trading loss), Nike, PwC, Goldman Sachs and KPMG. (What's up with all the financial firms? I thought everybody hated Wall Street.)Universum's survey cited work-life balance and job security as the two most important factors for undergraduates in identifying their ideal job.Most of the companies on the list are doing pretty well, so job security makes sense, but the students are kidding themselves if they think places such as Apple or Goldman Sachs offer much in the way of work-life balance.What might have been
Think of this as one that got away.The Wall Street Journal reports that the Jack Welch Management Institute has named Daniel Szpiro, currently associate dean for executive education at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, as its new dean. (Strayer Education Inc. and former GE CEO Jack Welch teamed up to buy the school from its prior parent, Chancellor University in Cleveland, late last year.)Mr. Welch tells The Journal that Mr. Szpiro, who starts June 11, is a "dream candidate," adding that he had been doing "what we want, for an Ivy League school."Although the Welch Institute remained small at Chancellor, Mr. Welch says the school is expanding rapidly, with employees from companies including IBM and Microsoft signing up for courses. Strayer said the school “enrolled about 220 students in the spring term, including 76 new students, and is aiming for 150 new students in the next term,” according to The Journal.